State of Affairs Since 2005
As of 2006, Western alienation does not appear to be a significant force in Canadian politics. Protests over equalization payments from former Alberta premier Ralph Klein and others objected to the formula the federal government used to determine the distribution of the payments. Klein had been quoted as threatening to drop out of the program, although this would have been a symbolic act with no legal weight since the program is funded from the federal government's general revenues.
There were also calls for the separation of at least Alberta from Canada, most notably from University of Alberta professor emeritus Leon Craig; however, such arguments were rare, while not necessarily new, and were not expected to materialize into a significant political movement in the near future.
Later decisions of the minority Conservative government of Stephen Harper – on issues such as income trusts and the recognition of the Québécois as a "nation within a united Canada" – caused some dissent amongst a segment of Western Canadians who traditionally supported the Tories. These feelings fostered only a small ripple in the Tories' popularity in Alberta, with the formation of the new federal Party of Alberta in late 2006.
Read more about this topic: Western Alienation
Famous quotes containing the words state of affairs, state of, state and/or affairs:
“A set of ideas, a point of view, a frame of reference is in space only an intersection, the state of affairs at some given moment in the consciousness of one man or many men, but in time it has evolving form, virtually organic extension. In time ideas can be thought of as sprouting, growing, maturing, bringing forth seed and dying like plants.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Across Parker Avenue from the fort is the Site of the Old Gallows, where 83 men “stood on nothin’, a-lookin’ up a rope.” The platform had a trap wide enought to “accommodate” 12 men, but half that number was the highest ever reached. On two occasions six miscreants were executed. There were several groups of five, some quartets and trios.”
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program. Arkansas: A Guide to the State (The WPA Guide to Arkansas)
“If intercourse gives you thrombosis
And continence causes neurosis,
I’d rather expire
Fulfilling desire
Than live in a state of psychosis.”
—Anonymous.
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)